More of Pondicherry... Now, the Botanical Garden!

I first came to know of the Pondicherry Botanical Garden while reading Yann Martel’s Life of Pi. But a visit to this ‘heritage site’ of Pondicherry turned out to be a huge disappointment. Apart from the graceful entrance and a few boards that spoke of the garden’s history and ‘Importance of the Botanical Garden!’ (every sentence on the board ended with a !), and a sculpture of two bulls, there isn’t really anything worth seeing here.

The Pondicherry Botanical Garden is 181 years old, and the only one on the East Coast. According to one of the boards, it houses several tree species… Evergreen, semi-evergreen, tropical dry evergreen, deciduous, ornamental trees, fruit-bearing trees, and trees of medicinal and economic value. The board also claims that the rare and endangered Cynometra ramiflora is found exclusively here, and nowhere else. Apparently, one can also see specimen of Khaya senegalensis (native to Africa) and massive forms of Pittosporum floribundum, Spondias pinnala, Enterolobium cyclocarpum, Pterocarpus marsupium and Alstonia scholaris. We saw tamarind, teak, mahogany, palm and cannon-ball trees. We looked for Cynometra, pretty much scoured the botanical garden for it, but couldn’t find it.

In Life of Pi, there is a mention of a toy train that stops at two stations, Roseville and Zootown, whose name I have forgotten. There really is a toy train that runs through the botanical garden, but it has more than two stations, one of them being Fernhill. And I were somewhat surprised to see the train full of college students, roughly our age, hooting and whistling whenever the train passed through a tunnel, making an unbearable din even otherwise.

But oblivious to all that noise, under almost every tree, there slept a person (sometimes even a small family). Wherever we looked, we saw homeless people dozing in the afternoon heat, the trees providing some respite from the relentless sun. It’s really not the sight one expects to see at a botanical garden. There was an information centre, filled with sleeping people. Some families have set up home and are living in the botanical garden… we saw mini-kitchens and clotheslines where we should have seen exotic trees.

There’s a greenhouse (it was locked), a rose garden (we didn’t see any roses) and a ‘musical dancing fountain’ (which hadn’t played for years, by the look of it). As we walked past each ‘attraction’, not the least bit interested but still clicking away on the camera, a small gang of guys followed us around, muttering in Tamil and wolf-whistling. “Zoology students, da… Can’t you see how interested they are in plants?”, one Whatte asked another (what is a Whatte, did you ask? I shall explain in the end). I was tempted to turn around and tell him that a botany student would very probably be more interested in plants than a zoology student, but I wasn’t about to start an argument with a bunch of Whattes when we were outnumbered 3 to 1.We scooted out of there as fast as we could, and found better sights to see.

By the way, I went through the history of the Botanical Garden. There’s no mention of a zoo anywhere there :P

Soon after our rather sad tour of the Pondicherry Botanical Garden, that too on an unbearably hot day, we found a nice ice cream parlour on Nehru Street and gorged on delicious Choco-mint Sundaes. That, I believe, was the best part of the day!

Now, what a whatte is:

The word is derived from “What a (guy)!!!”, pronounced rather badly. A Whatte is essentially a wannabe dude… The look-at-me-I’m-so-cool type. The kind of guy who swings his arms with excessive energy as he walks (or struts) and holds them at a rather odd angle, away from his body. The kind with chunky steel accessories and overgelled hair of an unbecoming colour. The kind that ogles. Get it?

Go with the flow...

That's what X always told me to do... Go with the flow. I took her advice. I'm now caught in a current, unable to get out of it, and being swept towards that big waterfall right there...

It all began with one harmless fancy. I wondered what it'd be like to take the GRE. So, the last time i was home, I went out and bought PrincetonReview's 'Cracking the GRE'. I had no intentions of actually taking the exam... I just wanted to see what the big deal was about GRE.

I was wrong. One thing led to another- since I can actually prepare for the GRE, why not take it? Since I'm taking the GRE, why not apply to a couple of Univs abroad? Ah. You want to apply? Sure, go ahead. Get your transcripts ready. Get your essay written. Find professors who'd willingly write recommendation letters for you. NACES. Financial documents. Bank statements. TOEFL. So on and so forth. All because of one harmless book.

Sorry, this isn't really a post. Just a very lengthy and vague excuse for not putting up anything new on my blog for a while. I WON'T be blogging for several weeks more, there's that too.

In essence, I'm busy, and shall be unable to update my blog. That's all!

A Cockroach Ride

In a previous post, I narrated a rather memorable bus journey. It appears that buses aren’t the only providers of action… Last Sunday, D, G and I were on our way back to JIPMER from the beach, in one of those shared autos (a k a Cockroaches). The Cockroach was packed to the fullest extent possible, and I was crammed between G and a woman with four young kids. Right behind me, his back against mine, sat the driver of the Cockroach. We’d just started off when a fight broke out between the woman with the four kids and the driver. She refused to purchase tickets for her kids, saying they were all too young to count. The driver pointed out that no matter what their age, they took up space, because only kid sat on her lap while the other three sat on the seats, so she would do well to pay up. She refused.

The argument, inevitable as it was, began. The driver pulled over, turned around to face the woman, and began yelling. She yelled back. There was quite a shouting match going on. “Shut up! Shut UP! SHUT UP!!!”, he hollered. “YOU shut up!”, she hollered back. Another woman, ostensibly a friend of the one with four kids, hollered “SHUT UP!” at nobody in particular. Since I was caught right in the middle of the fight, literally, squashed between the warring parties, I was deafened by the “SHUT UP”s and also generously sprayed with spit. Ew ew ew. After shouting for several more minutes, everyone DID shut up, though both the driver and the women continued to mutter rather unintelligibly.

And then, quite suddenly, an oldish woman right at the back of the Cockroach said something about mothers not ‘keeping their kids to themselves’ (rough translation, that one). The mother of four sprang up from her seat (quite a feat, considering the Cockroach was CRAMMED with people (and four kids, of course) and slapped the oldish woman- SMACK!!! Soon there was a string of Tamil profanities that I can’t translate to English, and even if I could, I wouldn’t have been able to put those words in a post on my blog.

Soon, they came to blows. First they beat each other, trying to do their best, what with the limited space and lack of light. I received a few blows on my back. We decided it was high time we got off the Cockroach. The last I saw, each woman was trying to pull the other’s hair out. I thought of all those seemingly pointless questionnaires I’ve answered… You know, the ones that carry questions like

If you came across two people fighting, you would

1. Stop and watch
2. Try to pull them apart
3. Try to make them see reason and stop fighting
4. Just let them be and get out of there as soon as possible

I’d always answered either B or C (though option C doesn’t make any sense, really). But I now realize that it’s a LOT more important that I save my own back. I DID try option B, albeit half-heartedly, but I got kinda hurt in the process. From now on, it shall be D. Always.

Well, thanks to that catfight, we had to get down MILES from JIPMER and then walk most of the way. As a result, we were late for dinner, and missed the Gulab Jamun that had been prepared as the Weekend Special…. Sigh.

The City of Dawn

‘There should be somewhere on earth, a place which no nation could claim as its own, where all human beings of good will who have a sincere aspiration, could live freely as citizens of the world and obey one single authority, that of the Supreme Truth; a place of peace, concord and harmony…’

Reading that was enough to make me fall in love with Auroville, a utopian settlement a little to the north of Pondicherry. This alluring universal town was founded in 1968 by Mother Mirra Alfassa, the chief disciple of Sri Aurobindo Ghosh, as a ‘laboratory of evolution’. Here, a city has been created where all persons can live in freedom and peace, rising above all petty politics, caste, creed, and nationality, in unity and international understanding.

On February 28th of 1968, Auroville, or the City of Dawn, was inaugurated, when youth from 128 nations placed a fistful of their native soil in a white, lotus-shaped urn near the Matrimandir, representing the creation of a city dedicated to unity and harmony. Today, the city sprawls over 25 square kilometers, comprising of 80 settlements, separated by local villages. The city is planned in the shape of a spiral galaxy, with four zones radiating out from the Matrimandir, which the Mother called the Soul of Auroville.



The site of Auroville was originally a backward and impoverished rural area. Under the French architect Roger Anger, the Aurovillians toiled for twenty years and have succeeded in transforming it into a lush and beautiful settlement, with dense jungles and breathtaking greenery all around. The Aurovillians used only biological farming methods, planted over two million trees and paved all paths with plants. Even now, their primary activities include afforestation, organic agriculture, village development and environmental conservation.

I visited Auroville on a rainy Sunday with a few friends and students. We went straight to the Visitor’s Centre, built of mud blocks and Ferro cement. We spent considerable time looking around, gazing at the pictures in the gallery and reading all about the principles of Auroville, its history, conception, values and activities. After a cup of steaming coffee and a few brownies at the café, we went on to collect the free passes that would allow us to walk to Matrimandir, which our students called the Golden Globe.

Before actually going to Matrimandir, we visited a small information centre, where we learnt that the Matrimandir is erected on four pillars, each one representing an aspect of the Mother. They’re called Mahalakshmi, Mahakali, Mahasaraswathi and Mahaparvathi. The structure of the globe itself is quite interesting. At the heart of Matrimandir is a circular meditation room, with white walls, and white carpeting on the floor. At the centre stands a crystal orb, the largest in the world (about 70 cm in diameter). Around the room are 12 pillars. Through an operculum above, sunlight falls directly on the orb, lighting it up. There is nothing else… No idols, no religion or religious symbols, no writing, no ornate carvings. As the Aurovillians put it, there is nothing except absolute silence, meditation, and Truth. They claim that once inside, nothing matters, except the Supreme Truth. All that one must concentrate on is the play of sunlight on the polished surface of the sphere. Nothing else matters, nothing else is real.

The construction of Matrimandir began in 1971, and is still going on. The inner chamber is now complete, but work is still going on outside. We couldn’t go inside Matrimandir because of the ongoing construction work, and even if that weren’t the case, we would’ve been asked to come back some other time because Matrimandir is open only in the afternoons, and only on weekdays.

After watching a documentary on Auroville and Matrimandir, we collected our passes and walked one kilometer through the Matrimandir gardens (Battery-powered coaches are available for those who can’t walk that far) to the globe. It’s really quite awe-inspiring… like a gigantic blob of gold, surrounded by greenery. Right in front of Matrimandir lies an amphitheatre. And that’s where the urn containing the soil of 128 countries is. Nearby, there’s a huge banyan tree, the geographical centre of Auroville, revered nearly as much as Matrimandir itself.

I was delighted to learn that Auroville has only mud paths, paved with plants. Nearly all the construction here is eco-friendly. All the houses in Auroville are dependent on solar energy. In the kitchen of Auroville, there’s a solar cooker that’s 15 meters in diameter… probably the largest in India. Biogas tanks and solar heaters are commonly used for domestic purposes. There are 30 windmills, 2 wind turbines which pump water, and 100 photovoltaic pumps and a 36 kW photovoltaic power plant. What with all the greenery, energy conservation plans and near-zero pollution, this community must be every environmentalist’s dream come true.

The inhabitants of Auroville are actively involved in educational research, health care, cultural activities, community service, small and medium scale businesses. They have set up workshops and schools, and provide education to a large number of the rural populace. They also have several education centres for the local farmers. Research is on in several fields… organic farming, alternative energy sources, water management, and so on. Meanwhile, they also experiment with issues relating to organization- the process of entry, the economy, decision taking, and other aspects of administration.

All education in Auroville is based on what Sri Aurobindo once said… ‘The first principle of teaching is that nothing can be taught’. Auroville claims that here, children would receive education not so that they can pass exams, obtain certificates or jobs, but so that they can ‘enrich existing faculties and bring forth new ones’. Opportunities to serve the community are considered more important than ranks and titles. Work here is not a way to earn one’s livelihood, but a means to express oneself and develop one’s capacities, while serving the community to the fullest extent possible.

Later, we checked out the Auroville boutique, which sells fine leather, marbled silks, batik textiles, essential oils, aromatherapy bath salts, fragrant candles, pottery, pewter, cards and handmade paper. We then stood watching as a few artists in the Artist’s Camp sketched and painted. Soon, it was time to go. We took one last look around and then headed back to the real world, which, even with all its corruption, communalism, hatred, bigotry and discrimination, isn’t such a bad place after all. But if every place could be like Auroville…


‘…It would be a place where human relationships, which are normally based almost exclusively on competition and strife, would be replaced by relationships of emulation in doing well, of collaboration and real brotherhood…’

Buses, brakes and bald heads

Once again, it's time to leave home. I've spent the last two days pressing, folding and packing. Really, I envy those Bollywood heroines who screech hysterically, "Mein yeh ghar chod ke jaa rahi hoon!" and then just toss a few designer sarees into a designer suitcase rather unceremoniously and strut out of the ghar. Ohhh boy. Not so easy. I know my kind of 'leaving' is slightly different, but still.

Anyway, this time tomorrow, I'll be on a bus to Pondicherry. I generally like journeying by bus. More often than not, a bus ride is anything but uneventful. This leads me to narrate something that happened the last time I was traveling to Pondicherry (Yeah, kinda like Tinkle's 'It Happened To Me', I know)...

I was traveling alone, and I had a window seat in the very nice, very comfortable bus. Sitting right in front of me was a bald, middle-aged man (henceforth referred to as BMM, for convenience's sake), who, soon after the bus started moving, reclined his seat and promptly fell asleep. Every few minutes, he'd wake up and move the back of his seat a little further back. By the time we entered Tamil Nadu, the back of his seat (and his head) was resting against my knee. Bugged, I moved to the next seat which, thankfully, was empty. BMM started to snore, loudly at that. I got bugged-er. I looked around. Everyone else seemed to be asleep too, with the exception of a heavily pregnant lady who was retching into a plastic cover (her second. The first plastic bag was still hanging from the hook on the back of the seat in front of hers) with abandon.

I looked away, and focused all my attention on the snoring BMM. How could I wake him up? Which would be the best, most irritating way of doing so? Okay, I was being unnecessarily mean, but an idle mind is the devil's workshop, remember? I played a game on my cellphone, careful to shine the light on BMM's face. I was contemplating playing a loud and unpleasant ringtone (Mars, or Coconut would've been my choice), when the bus, which had been whizzing along at a remarkable speed, lurched to a sudden halt.

Inertia. I fell forward. Since I'd stowed the arm rest, I quite involuntarily grabbed that which had now taken it's place- BMM's bald head!!! To make matters worse, I'd had my mobile in my hand, and there was a dull THWACK when it made contact with BMM's skull. I withdrew my hand at once and squeaked, "Sorry, sir!", but the damage had been done. I wish I could describe the look (The Look) BMM gave me, but I can't. I won't even try... I'll leave it to your imagination.

Anyway, after that, BMM pulled his seat back into the normal position, I moved back to my own seat, and the pregnant lady stopped puking and threw both plastic bags out. Nothing untoward happened during the rest of the journey.

But the best part was yet to come. I got off the bus right in front of JIPMER, instead of going all the way to the Pondicherry Bus Stand. And guess what? BMM got off too! As we walked through the gates of JIPMER together, another man, a doctor, came striding up to BMM and spoke to him for a while. He called BMM 'Doctor'. So he works there in JIPMER. He's very probably a staff member. Maybe even a big shot... the kind that can pull some major strings.

Dr BMM gave me The Look again, and walked off.

A Walk Along Serenity Beach

The first Sunday we were there, still homesick and kinda lost, S and I thought we’d spend the day exploring Pondicherry. We took one of those shared auto rickshaws (lovingly referred to as Cockroaches in JIPMER) to Nehru Salai, which is one of the busiest streets in Pondicherry. There. We bought ourselves a map (which later turned out to be BS… we got nowhere as long as we relied on that map), rented a two-wheeler for the day and set off towards the beach.



Pondicherry Beach, or Serenity Beach, is a 1.5km long, rocky shoreline. Some of the bloodiest Anglo-French battles were fought on these sands. Today, however, this beach is ideal for a calm (or romantic) stroll. Or one can just sit on the parapet by the sea (or on one of the rocks) and gaze out at the rolling waves for hours and hours, or watch fishermen at work, or just enjoy the sea-spray.

Goubert Avenue, which runs along the beach, is sprinkled with a number of monuments and memorials. The most imposing among them would be the huge, impressive statue of Mahatma Gandhi, which stands on the seafront, surrounded by eight beautifully carved pillars. I remember reading somewhere that this statue is 'life-size'. Believe me, it most certainly is not. It's big, the way MG never was.

Right opposite the statue is the French War Memorial, built in honour of the soldiers who were killed in the First World War. I heard that every year, on Bastille Day, this memorial is beautifully lit up. I would've loved to see that, but sadly, I won't be there at that time of the year. Nevertheless, this white memorial is elegant and charming, illuminated or otherwise.

Next to the French War Memorial, in the Place du Gouvernement, is the 29m-tall Old Lighthouse.It was first lighted on 1st July, 1836. In 1931, a revolving lantern replaced the old fixed lamp that had been used till then. It is said that the beacon could be seen from a distance of up to 29km away. This lighthouse was later abandoned, after the commissioning of the new one in 1979.

Further south, at the end of Goubert Avenue, lies the Children's Park. Here stands the statue of Dupleix, one of the most able French Governors. Though Dupleix's tenure ended in 1754, this statue was erected in only in 1870. Originally, this 2.88m tall structure stood on six intricately carved granite pillars at the Place du Republique. However, it was later shifted to this Park, overlooking the sea. As you can see in the picture of the Children's Park (the one immediately below), there's a pier (284m long, I think), located just beyond.

At the northern end of Goubert Avenue lies the Indian War Memorial, a helmet perched on a rifle, flanked by tall pillars on four sides, This memorial was erected by the Government of Pondicherry in memory of the Indian soldiers who laid down their lives for the country.


Riding further north, we entered a small fishing village. We spent a few minutes there, watching the men fish and the women weave nets, or sort out the freshly caught fish.

After that, we were nicely baked brown, and quite tired. We found a Pizza Corner, where we had our lunch. We then went to the Botanical Garden, but that shall be described in a later part of this series of Pondi-blogs.

The Pondicherry beach surely is a lovely place to visit in the evenings too. Goubert Avenue is quite well-lit, and the whole place is a lot more serene than it usually is in the day (a lot more crowded too). On Saturday evenings, Goubert Avenue is closed to vehicular traffic. The police hold some kind of a parade... They all march along the beach road, playing 'police band music'. They then assemble at the Square near the statue of Mahatma Gandhi, and the band plays for an hour or so.

Well, that's about the Pondicherry beach. One may not be able to enjoy a good swim in the sea, but it still is a wonderful place.. a 'pleasant promenade', as they call it. Peaceful Pondicherry at its very best, indeed!

Pondicherry- India's Little France

I am home.

Those are probably the most beautiful three words I’ve ever heard. However, after learning to live in, and love, Pondicherry, I daresay I think the coming-home day came too soon!

Pondicherry is really a tiny town, packed with ‘seeables’. A well organized two-day trip should be enough to view every ‘tourist spot’ there. And I was there for forty days (and I’ll soon be going back for 50 more)! That’s long enough to make me consider taking up a job as a tourist guide. But since I have my work at JIPMER to think about, Pondi-blogging is about all I can do, for now.

Often referred to as The French Riviera of The East, this little town on the Coromandel coast is where the French dream of an Indian Empire began… and ended. French Pondicherry was a Boulevard Town, an oval with straight roads intersecting at right angles. The town was encircled by a boulevard, and split by a canal into Ville Blanche (White Town, the European side) and Ville Noire (Black Town, the Tamil part). While Ville Blanche exudes old-world charm, with its graceful French villas, paved streets and quiet, tree-lined lanes, Ville Noire is a realization of every Indian cliché- the bright colours, the dust, the heat, the flies, the noise and the people, the smell of sea and salt and fish thick in the air, enjoyable nevertheless.

Once called Vedapuri, Pondicherry is said to have been home to the sage Agastya. Excavations at Arikamedu, an archaeological site barely 4km from Pondicherry, reveal vestiges of a port town, and Roman settlements over 2000 years old. Vedapuri’s trade links with Rome and Greece continued till the Cholas took over Pondicherry (around 10^th- 11^th century). In the 13^th century, the Cholas were overthrown by the Pandyas. Later, the Vijayanagara Empire, which encompassed almost all of South India, ruled here till 1638, after which the Sultan of Bijapur took hold of Gingee (pronounced sen-jee, a fortified town 75km from Pondicherry).

In the early 16^th century, the Portuguese started a factory in Pondicherry. They, however, were routed out a century later by the ruler of Gingee. Then came the Danes, and the Dutch, who set up establishments here. The new ruler of Gingee invited the French to open trade centres in Pondicherry, so that they might compete with the Dutch.

On the Fourth of February, 1673, Bellanger, a French officer, took up residence in a Danish lodge in Pondicherry. Thus began the French hold over Pondicherry. A year later, Francois Martin, the first Governor, transformed Pondicherry from a tiny fishing village to a flourishing port town. In 1693, the Dutch took over Pondicherry and fortified it. However, six years and a peace treaty later, the French regained Pondicherry, and developed it considerably.

Under ambitious Governors like Lenoir (1726-35), Dumas (1735-41) and Dupleix (1742-54), Pondicherry grew into a large, wealthy town. But all plans of creating a French Empire in India were thwarted by Robert Clive. The British defeated the French at war, and all peace talks failed. Later, France sent Lally Tollendall to resurrect the French Empire. Tollendall seemed to be successful at first- he managed to raze the British Fort St. David in Cuddalore. However, his success was limited to his initial endeavour only, as France was later forced to cede the Hyderabad region to the British. Moreover, in 1761, Pondicherry was razed to the ground in an act of vengeance, and the city lay in ruins for the next four years.

For the next 50 years, the British and the French took turns occupying Pondicherry. Finally, in 1816, the French regained permanent control of Pondicherry and ruled there for the next 138 years. Long after India attained Independence, Pondicherry, in 1963, became an integral part of the Indian Union.

Today, Puducherry (yes, we do love going back to the Indian names our cities once had) is a Union Territory, and it includes Pondicherry (the town), Karaikal, Mahe and Yanam. Puducherry is considered a tourism hotspot.. Over 55 languages are spoken here. Walking down a busy street, one gets to hear snatches of conversation in Tamil, English, French, Telugu, Malayalam, and sometimes even German. Here’s a place where people from all over the world live together, where people reportedly speak French with a Tamil accent (!!!), where restaurants claim to serve Franco-Tamil food, where policemen continue to wear red military-style caps, the French kepis… India’s Little France.

P.S.: If any of you want to see all the pictures, click here. Some of these pictures may appear in future blogs, too.